Some mother's son

The Aquino family has a second shot at running South-East Asia’s laggard

FOLLOWING in the footsteps of his mother, Corazon Aquino, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino (above), an opposition senator, is poised to become the Philippines' next president. He has built up a seemingly unassailable lead in tallies of votes cast in a tense election held on May 10th. As when his mother took power from the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, his supporters pray that this marks a new era full of the promise of clean, stable politics and economic prosperity. They also pray that, this time, the promise will be fulfilled.

An unofficial tally showed that with nearly nine-tenths of the vote counted, there was little chance Mr Aquino could be overtaken by his nearest rival, a former president, Joseph Estrada, who has yet to concede victory. Congress is due to reconvene on May 31st to proclaim the winner.

In electing Mr Aquino, voters used a new computerised vote-counting system almost as revolutionary, by Philippine standards, as the “People Power” uprising that toppled Marcos. The system was meant to prevent the cheating that has marred previous elections, but there were doubts that it would work, and last-minute calls for the election to be postponed. Some members of the opposition suspected that the system was bound to fail and so allow the incumbent president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to cling to power. In the event the system worked fine, though largely because Mr Aquino's lead was so great as to be beyond dispute. There was a national sigh of relief: Mr Aquino had threatened another People Power uprising if he was cheated of victory.

There were the usual reports of vote-buying; in a few areas no voting took place at all; and the police said at least ten people were killed on polling day. Even so, the national police chief described the elections as “the most peaceful and orderly political exercise ever held in our land”.

Mr Aquino played on his reputation for honesty, contrasting himself with Mrs Arroyo, whose administration has been beset by corruption scandals. His campaign slogan was “No corruption means no poverty”. He has said he will have Mrs Arroyo investigated for graft. But what has been publicly disclosed about Mr Aquino's policies is long on pious wishes and short on detail. His reputation is largely inherited from his mother, revered for her probity. Her death last year provoked an outpouring of grief and a clamour for her son to run for president, despite his relative obscurity. He has served in both houses of Congress, but has a lacklustre record there.

Mr Aquino will face problems familiar to his predecessors: how to spur an economy that lags behind most of South-East Asia; widespread, entrenched poverty; a high birth-rate; reform of an over-prescriptive constitution; communist and Muslim separatist insurgencies; and home-grown terrorism linked to al-Qaeda.

He will need the co-operation of a new congress, also elected on May 10th. It was not immediately clear how well Mr Aquino's Liberal Party and its allies had fared. But parties often count for little—for the most part congressmen align themselves with the main source of political patronage, ie, the president. This kind of political opportunism and the tradition that new presidents return the favours done by power brokers during their election campaigns mean Mr Aquino will need all his mother's fortitude to resist the blandishments of those around him.

Another misgiving about the incoming president is that, like Mrs Arroyo (the daughter of an ex-president), he comes from one of the handful of families that have dominated Philippine politics and the economy for generations. His mother is remembered for restoring democracy But she failed to entrench stability or prosperity. During her presidency the economy boomed but then sagged, and she had to fend off several military-coup attempts. And she allowed the dominant families to regain the political and economic clout usurped by Marcos and his cronies.

In trying to make the second Aquino presidency more successful than the first, Mr Aquino will face opposition. On election day Mrs Arroyo won a seat in Congress. Her party, still a force to be reckoned with, aims to make her speaker. And although the incoming president says there is no more rancour between him and the Marcos family, the dictator's widow, Imelda, has also been elected to the house. She will be a well-shod reminder that Mrs Aquino failed to have her put behind bars for the fabulous corruption of which she and her late husband were accused.